Every day, millions of employees watch their
leaders sabotage themselves. They watch, they learn, and then they
do it, too. Next thing you know, everyone’s lost
motivation, and nobody takes ownership. That’s how
organizations fail. This book will help you break the vicious cycle
of self-handicapping leadership in

your organization, stop the excuses, and
unleash all the performance your team is capable of delivering.

Phil and Jordan reveal how and why people
handicap themselves even when they know better. Next, they
offer real solutions from their own pioneering research and
consulting. You’ll find practical ways to strengthen
accountability and self-awareness, recognize the “big
picture,” improve decision-making, deepen trust and
engagement, develop talent, escape micromanagement, and focus
relentlessly on outcomes.

Your colleagues can be far more effective,
and so can you. In fact, it starts with you–right
here, right now, with this book.

Many leaders inadvertently create cultures
of failure. They model and promote “selfhandicapping”
actions, where people withdraw effort or create new problems, in
order to maintain their own self-images of competence.
Self-Handicapping Leadership shines the spotlight on
this widespread and destructive phenomenon and presents real action
plans for overcoming it.

Phillip J. Decker and Jordan P. Mitchell
identify nine categories of self-handicapping, show how they
typically manifest themselves, explain their underlying causes, and
provide behavioral remedies for getting past them on both an
individual and organizational level. They address issues ranging
from tunnel vision to poor coaching and mentoring, weak decision
analysis to failures of trust and conviction.

In each chapter, you’ll find
real-world examples and lessons learned, practical assessments, and
easy-to-use action plans. This is all you need to eliminate
self-handicapping and unleash better performance: in teams,
organizations, subordinates–and most importantly, in
yourself!